The present disclosure relate to an air conditioner.
Air conditioners are home appliances that maintain indoor air into the most proper state according to use and purpose thereof. For example, such an air conditioner controls indoor air into a cold state in summer and controls indoor air into a warm state in winter. Furthermore, the air conditioner controls humidity of the indoor air and purifies the indoor air to become into a pleasant and clean state.
In detail, the air conditioner has a refrigeration cycle in which compression, condensation, expansion, and evaporation processes of a refrigerant are performed. Thus, a cooling or heating operation of the air conditioner may be performed to cool or heat the indoor air according to the refrigeration cycle.
Such an air conditioner may be classified into a split type air conditioner in which indoor and outdoor units are separated from each other and an integral type air conditioner in which indoor and outdoor units are integrally coupled to each other as a single device, according to whether the indoor and outdoor units are separated from each other. The outdoor unit includes an outdoor heat exchanger heat-exchanging with external air, and the indoor unit includes an indoor heat exchanger heat-exchanging with indoor air. The air conditioner may be operated in a cooling mode or heating mode which are converted into each other.
When the air conditioner is operated in the cooling mode, the outdoor heat exchanger serves as a condenser, and the indoor heat exchanger servers as an evaporator. On the other hand, when the air conditioner is operated in the heating mode, the outdoor heat exchanger serves as an evaporator, and the indoor heat exchanger serves as a condenser.
A supercooler for supercooling a refrigerant condensed by the condenser may be further provided in the air conditioner. The supercooler is configured to heat-exchange a main refrigerant circulating into the refrigeration cycle with a branched refrigerant partially branched from the main refrigerant and expanded. Thus, the main refrigerant and the branched refrigerant may be heat-exchanged with each other to supercool the main refrigerant.
In the supercooler according to the related art, a pipe through which the main refrigerant and the branched refrigerant flow may be provided as a spiral tube type. The main refrigerant may be supercooled through the heat exchange due to contact of the tube.
In a case where the pipe of the heat exchanger is provided as the spiral tube type, a heat-exchange area between the main refrigerant and the branched refrigerant may be limited to deteriorate heat-exchange efficiency between the main refrigerant and the branched refrigerant. Thus, there is a limitation that the refrigerant is not sufficiently supercooled.